This year, we decided to have our annual holiday greeting tied to the “Hollywood Holidays” theme we’ve been working on the last couple of weeks. The reason? This is the 70th anniversary of the release of Bing Crosby’s hit White Christmas. The song topped the charts in the weeks leading up to Christmas in 1942, and would go on (according to the Guinness Book of World Records) to be the biggest selling song of all time.
The song was first performed in a radio show in 1941, and was a part of the movie Holiday Inn, which was released in July of 1942.
WAVE Helen Gilbert remembered being in training camp as the holidays approached in 1942:
The first Christmas in Wisconsin, it was very sad. We were all homesick. We were just a bunch of young girls who wanted to go home. I remember Bing Crosby’s White Christmas. Every time it went on we were just sobbing. It was crazy, but we lived through it and finally graduated.
May your days be merry and bright and all your Christmases be white.
Hinges of History 